away from the wind too, so she could acquire a tan but not the aging of skin that would accompany it. Her place for this was on the patio outside the living room where the piano was, sheltered by the bougainvillea bushes. Next to her chair on a small glass-topped table was a box of stationery, Bain de Soleil, tissues and a half-glass of Evian, ice and lime. She was in a bathing suit and Son thought she was like a marshmallow warming but not toasting itself. That inside the white smooth skin was liquid sugar, no bones, no cartilage—just liquid sugar, soft and a little pully. Quite unlike her tips, where all of her strength was. Direction, focus, aggression, tenacity—all that was tough and survivalist in her lay in the tips of her fingers, the tips of her toes, her nose tip, her chin tip, and he suspected her breast tips were tiny brass knobs like those ornately carved fixtures screwed into the drawers of Jadine’s writing table. Even the top of her head was fierce, pulled back as it was into a red foxtail of stamina. She heard him approach and turned her head slowly. The minute she saw him, she reached for her towel. Son picked it up from the flagstones and handed it to her. His gesture was swift and accommodating so she did not fling it over herself as she had probably intended to do but simply held it in her lap.
“I scare you?”
“No. Yes,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up.”
He did not comment on that so she said, “What is it?”
“Nothing. I just saw you out here and wanted to say hello.”
“Hello. Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
“It shouldn’t be. You should have more to say after what you did to me.”
“What did I do to you?” He was counting on the liquid sugar. Never mind the tips.
“You know what. You sat in my closet and scared the hell out of me.”
He smiled. “You scared the hell out of me too.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“It’s true. Your husband was right; you were wrong. As soon as he saw me he knew I didn’t mean no harm.”
“He wasn’t there. I was. I was in that closet; I saw you.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw a big black man sitting in my closet is what I saw.”
“I’m not so big. Your husband’s bigger—taller—than I am. Besides, I was sitting down. What made you think I was big?”
“There are no small men in a closet. Unless the closet belongs to them. Any stranger in a closet is big. Big and scary. I thought—”
“You thought what?”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes and did not answer.
Son finished her sentence. “That I was going to—that if you hadn’t come in and turned on the light, I was going to stay there, wait there, until you went to bed and then I would creep out and GETCHA!” He laughed then, laughed like a ten-year-old at a Three Stooges movie. Mouth wide open, bubbly sounds coming from his chest.
“Cut that out. Don’t try to make fun of it.”
But he kept on laughing, long enough to make a little anger spread inside her. When he could stop laughing he said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at myself. I was seeing myself do it. Or try to do it, and it looked funny. Me with my raggedy pants down around my ankles trying to get in your bed.”
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not, but believe me it wouldn’t have been much of a rape. Sex is hard when you’re starving, but I thank you for the compliment.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Margaret spread the towel across her knees and picked up the iced glass. “And the part I do understand, I don’t believe.”
“When your son gets here, ask him. He’ll explain it.”
Margaret stopped sipping the water and looked at him. “How old are you?”
“About as old as your son.”
“My son is twenty-nine going on thirty.”
“Okay. Almost as old as your son.”
“He’ll be thirty March tenth.”
“Does he favor you or your husband?”
“Favor?”
“Look like. Does he look like you?”
“People say so. Everybody says so. The hair, of course, and his eyes are blue like mine. Everybody says he looks exactly like me. Nothing like his father.”
“He must be good-looking.”
“He is. He is. But tall like Valerian. Is that true? You’re shorter than Valerian?”
Son nodded. “He’s got at least two inches on me.”
